Santa Clara, CA — Centrify, the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats, today announced the next evolution of its Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Everywhere initiative, with support for new platforms — including Windows and UNIX servers, as well as Windows laptops — and new authentication factors while extending MFA to privileged account use cases.

“Centrify is committed to protecting businesses against cyberattacks that target both end users and privileged IT users,” said Bill Mann, chief product officer of Centrify. “We are extending our MFA capabilities to Windows to better secure end users and their devices. For privileged IT users, we’ve added additional server operating systems, as well as enforcing MFA when remote sessions are initiated, and on privileged password checkout. Our integrated MFA capabilities clearly differentiate our solution from the competition when it comes to securing access across today’s hybrid infrastructure and apps environment.”

New Platform Support

Centrify’s MFA has been extended to new platforms to better secure all types of users in a hybrid environment. Centrify now supports MFA at login into Windows laptops, desktops and servers as well as MFA support for Windows privileged command execution, benefiting IT organizations who want to further secure both their end users and IT users from the compromising of credentials by hackers or malicious insiders. Centrify has also further extended server support for MFA at login and privilege elevation beyond Linux operating systems to now support UNIX systems running IBM AIX, HP-UX and Oracle Solaris.

New Authentication Factors

A large part of Centrify’s MFA Everywhere initiative is focused on eliminating the legacy difficulties associated with MFA. In the past, dedicated hardware tokens were required for access — driving up costs and frustrating users. Any business security solution will fail if employees do not adopt it, which is why Centrify aims to make user adoption both simple, and secure.

In order to facilitate adoption, Centrify supports a broad and growing range of factors. Most recently introduced is the ability to integrate with legacy MFA solutions (e.g. RSA) that require tokens, thanks to support for RADIUS servers. This means enterprises can both leverage and transition from dedicated hardware to other factors, including voice calls, email, SMS, mobile authenticator, OATH-based OTP, Yubikeys and/or Smart Cards. Providing a wider range of options means more businesses can find a way to increase security without requiring a change in user behavior, all while protecting their investment in existing technology.

New Use Cases

A security solution is only as strong as its weakest link, which is why companies need to move away from standalone silos of MFA, to a holistic approach. Centrify’s solutions have been extended to address more privileged account use cases, including MFA for VPN-less remote server access and shared account password checkout. Support for Smart Card login into the Centrify Identity Service and Centrify Privilege Service portals have also been added. In addition, Centrify has further expanded its support for derived credentials on mobile devices. These new use cases extend existing support for both end users and privileged IT users — all from a common platform.

About the Centrify MFA Everywhere Initiative

Today’s most successful attacks continue to take advantage of compromised credentials. If these credentials are associated with the privileged IT administrators at a company, then all company data, including customer information is at risk. Centrify provides an added layer of security with MFA across all user types: whether it is an administrator or end user logging in as themselves and elevating privilege, or an IT admin checking out the password for a shared account.

Centrify counters these attacks with a platform-based approach to MFA that protects businesses across users and resources. The MFA Everywhere initiative aims to add flexible, adaptive MFA to VPNs, cloud and on-premises apps, mobile devices as well as server and workstation operating systems, while also seamlessly integrating MFA into privileged identity management capabilities such as checking out enterprise passwords and executing privileged commands. This broad support means that administrators and end-users get secure access to the tools and resources they need to do their jobs, without the hassles of constant prompting or having to use different MFA solutions for different use cases, or the need for cumbersome dedicated infrastructure and hardware. And with Centrify’s support for adaptive authentication, users get secure access based on context. That means users only authenticate when necessary, and get seamless single sign-on when allowed.

Centrify is the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats that target today’s hybrid IT environment of cloud, mobile and on-premises. The Centrify Identity Platform protects against the leading point of attack used in data breaches ― compromised credentials — by securing an enterprise’s internal and external users as well as its privileged accounts. Centrify delivers stronger security, continuous compliance and enhanced user productivity through single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, mobile and Mac management, privileged access security and session monitoring. Centrify is trusted by over 5000 customers, including more than half of the Fortune 50.

Centrify is a registered trademark and Centrify Server Suite, Centrify Privilege Service and Centrify Identity Service are trademarks of Centrify Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.